


Indistinguishable from magic

by Noxnoctisanima



Category: Now You See Me (2013)
Genre: Gen, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 16:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2738585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noxnoctisanima/pseuds/Noxnoctisanima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is more to The Eye than they ever could have believed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indistinguishable from magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vyola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vyola/gifts).



“To understand The Eye you need to understand that most of what you think you know is wrong.” They’d been carefully hustled away from New York to a non descript apartment in Chicago. They had somehow managed to refrain from demanding answers until the door had closed behind them. “Deception is the basis of most magic, you’re getting your audience to look at your left hand when it is the right doing the work, but not all magic works like that. Every now and then a magician comes who is so good, so practiced that something happens and it isn’t just deception anymore.”

 

“Have you ever noticed a trick work almost without you?” The room shifted awkwardly, uncomfortable with the suggestion but also all too familiar with the feeling.

 

“That’s the start. That is what The Eye looks for. For magicians whose tricks become more than just illusion.” He held out a deck of cards and cut it, shuffling with ease. Their eyes followed as he cut again, palmed a card and then slipped it back in. 

 

“We all know how we would rig a deck. We’ve done it time after time, thousands of hours perfecting the one trick until it’s perfect, effortless, until our hands could do it without us.” He flipped the ace of spades followed by the clubs, diamonds and hearts.

 

“Magic follows paths, patterns and so does the energy we’ve come to call magic. It’s hard to access, hard to control but it will follow well worn paths like water follows a riverbed.” He cut the deck again but this time even their eyes could not see cards palmed, cards slipped back into the deck, to even eyes as skilled as theirs he looked as though he were simply shuffling. Then he turned up the ace of spades, of clubs, of diamonds and of hearts. 

 

“I didn’t do the trick better that time, I didn’t hide the palms or inserts any better. That was real magic, the kind you don’t believe in. It knew what I wanted, what I expected and it used the paths of experience and practice to do what I asked.” They were all so sceptical, so disbelieving as a condition of their existence, everything they were, everything they knew was based on the concept that people can be tricked, that anything could be faked. 

 

And yet.... here they could not bring themselves to disbelieve. 

 

“And this is what sets The Eye apart. Those dedicated, those  good enough to feel the flow. Alone very few ever grasp it, ever realise there is something there to grasp, but with help anything you can do with illusions, with mechanics, with trickery and distraction and deception you will do with this.” 

  
  
  


However, as it turned out believing Dylan was truthful, that magic of the kind they had always been taught did not and could not exist was real and being able to use that magic were two  very different things. 

  
  


Dylan told them to start with their first trick. The one they knew so well and for so long that it was as natural to them as breathing. So for the next week Daniel shuffled cards until his hands cramped and then left them littered over the living area. Jack swapped straight spoon for bent spoon in a constant, blurring movement of silver. Henley unlocked handcuff after handcuff until, bored, she began to lock herself to the others and pick them as they bitched at her. Merrick cold read everyone he could find, picking apart histories and secrets until even Daniel could feel the cold discomfort in the room. 

 

And at first nothing happened. 

 

Then slowly, in fits and starts, something moved. It was hard to articulate, hard to name but it flowed and Jack’s spoons clattered to the floor, both with matching half bends. 

 

Jack stared down at them, still not quite believing he had done it himself. 

 

“You did it?” Daniel had discarded his cards and was staring down at the spoons, soon Henley and Merrick joined him. 

 

“I don’t...I think so?” He picked up the spoon and tapped it against the table, it clanged. He grinned, suddenly elated. “I fucking did it!”

 

“How did you do it?” Daniel leant in close, flicking the bend.

 

Jack grinned at his spoons.

 

“I have no idea.”

  
  
  


“Don’t be jealous Daniel. I’m sure it’s not your fault it’s not working for you yet.” Merrick smirked at Daniel, his feet thrown over the side of the armchair. 

 

Daniel reordered his cards with careful control and pointedly, badly, ignored him. Henley tittered cruelly as she picked her shackles, Jack was out in a terrible beard and hat combo buying more spoons. 

 

“I notice you’re still not reading my mind Merrick.” Merrick grinned, poking Daniel’s buttons was just too easy. 

 

“Maybe it’s because I don’t have to read your mind to know what you’re thinking J. Daniel.” He wiggled his fingers at Daniel. “You’re an open book, all twitchy over there. Desperation in every line of your body.”

 

For a moment Daniel wanted more than anything to be able to throw cards like Jack could, to be able to send them flying until they sliced skin and drew blood. 

 

And for a moment Merrick knew it too. 

 

His brilliant, booming laugh forced Daniel to look back at him and while Daniel was not a mentalist by any stretch of the imagination, magic was half observation. 

 

“No.” 

 

“Yes.” He laughed again and grinned. “I’m honoured though that you wouldn’t turn to something so crass as knocking me over the head.”

 

Daniel threw the cards at him anyway but instead of falling haphazardly, they fell in a perfect circle, laying themselves carefully over each other. In the background Henley’s cuffs fell from her as she rushed forward, too focused on Daniel’s magic for a moment to notice she hadn’t picked them. 

  
  
  


Experiencing their first flush of magic, true magic left them exalted and amazed and utterly frustrated.

 

Dylan laughed at them.

 

“Magic, no matter the kind, doesn’t have shortcuts. You mastered one trick, that doesn't mean you don’t have to work to master the next one.”

 

Somehow, with all their experience and skill, that hadn’t occurred to any of them. Dylan smiled benignly, Merrick didn’t need to read the other’s minds to know what they thought about that.

  
  
  


Jack was practicing throwing cards through the couch and was developing a solid pile as the trick stubbornly refused to turn magical. 

 

“I haven’t felt this much like an amateur since I was eight and my dad was teaching me how to pick pockets.” He flicked the next at the wall in sheer spite and it crumpled, the laminated surface buckling under the force of his frustration. “And I can’t even be pissed at anyone because I know I can do it with enough practice.” 

 

"I've got nearly twenty years on you Jacky boy, imagine how it feels to me." Merrick was staring down Henley who was pointedly ignoring his gaze in favour of  unlocking handcuffs with her mind. "You're not going to get your next trick down if you keep repeating the one you've already got darling." 

 

"Maybe I don't enjoy failure as much as you do." The lock clicked again. "Or maybe I'm just smarter than you." The lock clicked itself closed and she smirked at them.

 

"How the hell did you do that?" 

 

She smiled at Daniel a little patronisingly, as close as they had become, she was never going to let him go that easily.

 

"You jumped to the next trick, you never thought about the obvious. Magic flows down paths, down familiar grooves, so it was stupid to go to a completely different trick. I chose a trick that lead off an old one because I listen, unlike you." 

 

There was the clap of hands in the doorway. Daniel jumped at the noise.

 

"Jesus, you need to stop doing that."

 

Dylan smiled at Henley.

 

"I thought it would be you who figured it out. "

 

Daniel bristled a little at that, Merrick had lived through too much to take it as an insult and Jack hadn't had the time Daniel had to develop an ego.

 

"You weren't going to tell us that there was an easier way?" Daniel's voice had a hint of whine to it that made Henley smile.

 

"The Eye doesn't recruit people who need everything spelled out for them. You would have figured it out in time." 

 

"In time for what?"

 

"Your first job for The Eye."

  
  
  


It was obviously a trial run. It would have almost been insulting after the show they'd just performed if they weren't all so sadly aware that in this kind of magic they were true novices. 

 

They were targeting an investment bank that had done some seriously shady things in the GFC and then gotten away with it because other people who no one wanted to arrest had done worse. 

 

They were going to be breaking into their headquarters and diverting some funds to the people they'd fleeced. Nowhere near as complicated or long as robbing a Parisian bank and tricking Arthur but hard enough when using completely new skills.

 

Dylan had provided Henley and Jack with an electronic lock they were alternatively trying to hack and magic open. Merrick was off on the street in Jack’s impressively terrible beard and hat trying to read strangers as clearly as he could Daniel. And Daniel himself was at a computer desk in the corner practicing disappearing data. 

 

It was lucky they weren't on a time limit. 

  
  


It had been a long, boring night, just like all the other long, boring nights and John was just considering topping up his coffee when he saw a woman on the monitors stumble against the front door. She sat down on the front step and rubbed her ankle and then tried to stand again and buckled back to the pavement. John stood up from his monitor bank and walked to the door, palming the lock open. 

 

“Miss, are you okay?”

 

She looked up from her ankle, startled. 

 

“Oh, you scared me. I think I might have sprained it.” She gestured to the sky high heels she had paired with a very short skirt. “I tripped.”

 

“Let me help you inside where it’s warm, and I’ll call you a cab.” 

 

“Thank you! I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.” She grabbed the top of his arm and he put his other around her waist. He was so focused on getting her up (and the feel of her body against his) that he almost didn’t notice the man come up behind him. He did notice the heavy hand clap his chest. 

 

“The fuck dude!” John tried to reach for him but his arm wouldn’t lift and his feet seemed glued to the ground. He nearly fell over when the woman stepped back, perfectly stable on her heels. 

 

“Where’s the night elevator key?” The man was looking him straight in the eye. 

 

“There’s no way in hell I’m telling you that.” 

 

“It’s in the right hand drawer under the monitors, second door on the left.” He turned back to John. “You’re very tired. You’re going to go back inside and have a nap and when you wake up in the morning all you’re going to remember is that you helped a lady who tripped.”

 

The man was right, he was really tired. John yawned as he walked back into the building. The woman followed him back into his office but John left her to it as he settled into his chair, kicked his feet up onto the desk and closed his eyes.

  
  


“Here.” Henley tossed the key to Merrick and then a second ring of keys. “I grabbed his keys while he was feeling me up.”

 

“If you’d like me to finish the job, I am always available.” 

 

“Open the elevator Merrick.” She turned on her heel, arriving back at the front doors just in time to open them for Daniel and Jack.

 

The three of them walked straight into the elevator where Merrick waited to push the button.

 

“Going up?”

 

“Twentieth floor.” Daniel said.

 

“I know dad.” Merrick pushed the button.

 

The doors opened to a slick lobby, all shiny metal and lights.

 

“Someone really wanted us to know this is the server room.”

 

“Get the door Jacky-boy.” Daniel pushed Jack out of the elevator and Henley followed. 

 

They knelt down in front of the door pad on an over the top security door. 

 

“You got the alarm?” Jack didn’t look sideways, just focused on the door.

 

“If you’ve got the lock.” 

 

They paused for a moment and then the lock fizzled and the door swung open. Henley and Jack slapped a low five and pushed the door open. 

 

“Your turn Danny-boy.” Jack smacked Daniel on the leg as he went past. 

 

Daniel sat down at the sole terminal and cracked his knuckles out. 

 

“Let’s see what this can do.”

 

Black dots appeared in the password field before it opened and Daniel smirked. 

 

“We’re in.” He held his hand out backwards. “Account numbers please.” 

 

Merrick handed them to him and he entered them and then sent off a transfer. 

 

“Done.” He stood up and stepped back. “Now we’ve just got to cover our tracks.” Henley came up on his right and Jack and Merrick on his left. 

 

“Together.” The four of them held their hands up and the room went black.    

 

    



End file.
